Friday, December 18, 2015

REP. JOE PITTS: Social media is a new front in the war on terror

Terrorism, and Islamic terrorism in particular, has continually
proven to be a global threat. In regions as far apart and as diverse as
Beirut, Paris, and San Bernadino, ISIS and their sympathizers have used
the technology and weaponry of civilization against civilization.

In
London, a man stabbed a stranger on the Tube, shouting “this is for
Syria!” The bloody aftermath was caught on a harrowing cell phone video
that is now circulating on the internet.

Massive
terrorism-related arrests have taken place in Brussels, Australia, and
Geneva. A soccer game in Germany was evacuated due to credible terrorist
threats.

According to the CIA, ISIS terrorists are present
in at least 30 countries. The FBI has over 900 open ISIS-related
investigations in the United States and has made some 50 arrests just in
2015. Militant groups in 20 different countries, including the
notorious kidnappers Boko Haram of Nigeria, have sworn allegiance to
ISIS.

Terrorists in Brussels have been proven to have made
contact with ISIS leaders in Syria. The San Bernadino murderers appear
to have met on an online dating website, and posted pro-ISIS propaganda
on Facebook just before conducting their attacks. Terrorist plots to
kill police officers in Boston and behead a blogger in Texas have been
discovered by means of their social media footprint. A total of some 300
Twitter accounts based in the United States have been found to be run
by terrorists.

According to research done at George
Washington University, terrorist suspects recruited by ISIS in the
United States tend to be younger than previous terrorist suspects, and
tend to be converts to Islam. Teenage boys and girls in Mississippi,
Minneapolis, and the Denver suburbs have been arrested in connection
with ISIS.

In a chilling development just this week, the FBI
arrested 19-year old Jabil Ameer Aziz from Harrisburg for aiding ISIS
propaganda on 57 different Twitter accounts.

Part of how
terrorism has gone global has been through advances in communications
technology. Social media have opened up new channels of communication
around our world, allowing anyone anywhere to speak to virtually anyone
else anywhere almost immediately. As with any technology, this new
capability can be used either for good or for evil.

While
many people have used these new tools for good, terrorist groups like
ISIS have been highly effective in recruiting sympathizers and
cooperators around the world through social media. It is even possible
that they have used online video games — through PlayStation — to
communicate encrypted information. This encryption problem poses a
serious challenge to our counterterrorism efforts, and Congress will
have the responsibility of solving it.

No one publicizes
ISIS’ murders as widely as ISIS does, posting on the internet videos of
beheadings, burnings, and shootings of their enemies. ISIS is so evil
that it actively recruits new terrorists all over the world using these
internet videos.

We are an open society, and rightly proud to
be one. But while terrorists hate the freedom of the West, they exploit
it against us.

The task before our leaders is to keep our
people safe, but we must not give up our freedom in order to protect it.
We must hold fast to the inalienable rights and liberties of which the
American people have always been jealous, and of which our enemies are
so contemptuous.

These concerns are why this week, the House passed legislation that would require the President to report to
Congress
on the extent of terrorist use of social media, as well as on a
strategy to enhance the exchange of information between the government
and social media companies so as to disrupt the terrorist recruitment
networks.

The House also passed legislation introduced by
Democratic Rep. Norma Torres to require the Secretary of Homeland
Security to develop and maintain an assessment of maritime
cybersecurity. This bill would also require the sharing of information
between Maritime Security Advisory Committees.

Earlier this
year, the House passed cybersecurity reform legislation, with President
Obama’s support, that would require the Director of National
Intelligence to create procedures for sharing imminent threat
information with the private sector, and allowing private sector
entities to share cyber threat indicators or defensive measures against
cyber threats.

These bills constitute neither the beginning
nor the end of our efforts to combat terrorists, but they are the next
step. We will continue to fight ISIS and any other threat to our safety
until they are no more — whether in theater or on the Internet.

U.S.
Rep. Joe Pitts is a Republican who represents Pennsylvania’s 16th
Congressional District in parts of Chester, Berks and Lancaster
counties.

Quotations of Note

"I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong."--Lord Acton

"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."--Lord Acton

"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry,Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps fromthe north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in thefield! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is lifeso dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,Almighty God! I know not what course others may take;but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"--Patrick Henry

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."--Thomas Paine

"The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice"--John Adams

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."--Thomas Jefferson

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain himâ?¦the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights."--Thomas Jefferson

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."--Thomas Jefferson

"The protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country, requirethat force should be interposed to a certain degree."--Thomas Jefferson

"To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Governmentas a barrier against foreign foes... is [one of the] functions of the General Government on which [our citizens] have a right to call."--Thomas Jefferson

"It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actuallytake place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, withoutinquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."--Thomas Jefferson

"I am ever unwilling that [peace] should be disturbed as long asthe rights and interests of the nations can be preserved. But whensoever hostile aggressions on theserequire a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we arejust friends and brave enemies."--Thomas Jefferson

"By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression iscommitted, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another ashis enemy."--Thomas Jefferson

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility againstevery form of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson

"Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on usby every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved countryduring the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice tothat all personal and local considerations."--Thomas Jefferson

"It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every countryto preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force withinits limits."--Thomas Jefferson

"By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggressionis committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy anotheras his enemy."--Thomas Jefferson

"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. But the temper and folly of our enemies maynot leave this in our choice."--Thomas Jefferson

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violentand sudden usurpations."--James Madison

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; withoutit nothing can succeed."--Abraham Lincoln

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall wefortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at ablow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted)in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make atrack on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot,we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time,or die by suicide."--Abraham Lincoln

"The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from thesupport of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me."--Abraham Lincoln

"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positivegood in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragementto industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labordiligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shallbe safe from violence when built."--Abraham Lincoln

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all meanthe same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, andthe product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they pleasewith other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatiblethings, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respectiveparties, called by two different and incompatible names -liberty and tyranny."--Abraham Lincoln

"If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyagenobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage."--Abraham Lincoln

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who pointsout how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dustand sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again;who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause;who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst,if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be withthose cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."--Theodore Roosevelt

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs,even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoymuch nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight thatknows not victory nor defeat."--Theodore Roosevelt

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group."--Franklin D. Roosevelt

"War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder.This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on thetiming and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour,of our choosing."--George W. Bush

"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more fliesthan a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince himthat you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, saywhat he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is reallya good one."--Abraham Lincoln

"To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judgeit by the standards of his time, not ours."--Mark Twain